Watch Bryan Cranston get villainous in a brand new Total Recall clip. Rene Russo hopes to return as Queen Frigga in Thor: The Dark World. American Horror Story gets a new subtitle, but what will the third Hobbit movie be called?

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Doctor Who.

Advertisement

The Wolverine

While Jessica Biel has dropped out of the running to play the villainous Viper, she was good enough to explain what was interesting to her about the character:

That particular character was really cool. She was this vivacious woman who is thrilled about her own immortality, and it was interesting, that kind of persona, I thought, for a quote-unquote "villain" character. And I was really interested in the director [James Mangold], so it was worth the conversation.

Thor: The Dark World

Rene Russo discusses her role as Odin's wife Frigga and how she would like to fit into the upcoming sequel:

"You know, they cut me [down] in the first film. [Director] Kenneth Branagh sent me a nice note, because he understood, he's an actor. You move on, what are you going to do? But I think they're going to need a good mom in the next film. Loki needs his mom. What the hell? I have a lot of compassion for him. But we might have to have a conversation about what he just did," Russo laughed. "And I might have to have a chat with Thor. But I am so confused — is Thor my son or not? People have been telling me recently, 'No, you're not his mother.' It's all so confusing! I got to tell ya, it would be a little embarrassing if I don't know. I need to read more about her."

Total Recall

Here's a new clip, which gives us an awesome glimpse of Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston as the evil Cohaagen:

Jessica Biel plays Malena, the (quite possibly literal) woman of Colin Farrell's dreams in the upcoming reboot, and she describes what drew her to the character:

I said, "Here's a really interesting female character." She's quite developed, she's emotional, she's a real woman, but she's totally capable and totally able. She's in this world that is an interesting theme, and interesting idea. What is identity, what is reality, what isn't? Interesting things to discuss in a world where the director has an amazing vision for what he wants, which is totally different from [the] original, and in my opinion, not a remake. At all. It's really a reimagining of the short story, of the source material, from [Philip K.] Dick's short story. So all of those elements were quite interesting to me, and the fact that Colin Farrell was going to play this Arnold Schwarzenegger character. This is obviously a different kind of film. This is something so different. When you say Colin's that main guy, I go "Oh! That's different! Okay!"

She also discusses whether her character is real or just a figment, and whether this film is more likely to be depicting reality than Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger's original:

...I'd still prepare and create the character in the same way that you would whether she's a figment of someone's imagination or whether she was completely real... I think if you were a figment, you wouldn't necessarily have to represent everything specifically, you could represent more from a larger sense. But I don't think she's a figment, and I don't think [director] Len [Wiseman] thinks she's a figment either. Obviously [we] leave it slightly vague.

Sure, sure, but your interpretation of the script, at least from your perspective, is that it has to be real.
Yes.

Elsewhere, Biel talks some more about how she and the rest of the creative team balanced the action and emotional connections between the characters:

It's just constant care and attention. It's constantly Colin and I, or whoever you're working with, going, "We have to give this the some time — let's do that again and think of how we can make the scene stronger emotionally." I know we have to shoot the big action sequence, but if you don't care about the two people going through it, who cares at the end of the day? And really, it's your director. If Len didn't care about a female character that was equally smart, cool, tough, kick-ass and emotionally vulnerable, emotionally sensitive and actually a woman, a real person, then you're dead in the water. Because he, in the end, is the only person who has the ability to put it all together, and on this one particularly, he cared about letting this person be this well-rounded and real — in a heightened sense, but a real woman.

The Hobbit

Now that Peter Jackson's adaptation has been officially expanded into a trilogy, the question becomes just what the additional film will be called, since the other two films are (at least for now) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There And Back Again. To that end, New Line has reportedly registered two new subtitles, The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle Of Five Armies. Since There And Back Again feels most appropriate for the title of the final film — hence the "and back again" bit — I would speculate that one of these two subtitles will be used for the second of the three films. Personally, I'd probably favor Battle Of The Five Armies, but I could quite easily be persuaded. Just as long as the original, incredibly fitting subtitles are still used, I won't complain. [The One Ring]

Dark Skies

Josh Hamilton — that dude from The Bourne Identity, not the 2010 AL MVP from the Texas Rangers — has reportedly joined Felicity star Keri Russell and Thor's Dakota Goyo in the cast of the latest film from Priest and Legion director Scott Stewart. The film is reportedly "a psychological thriller about a suburban couple whose lives become a nightmare when a terrifying alien presence enters their home each night to prey upon their children. Increasingly isolated from skeptical friends and neighbors, the couple is forced to take matters into their own hands to save their family." [Shock Till You Drop]

Doctor Who

To accompany the newly released trailer, here's an incredible new promo image from "Asylum of the Daleks", the episode that kicks off the seventh season. (Click for a huge wallpaper-size version.) And no, Amy almost certainly isn't dead in this photo, in case you're wondering. If — and this is a massive if — she does die this series, it won't be until the fifth episode, which is the one in which they fight the Weeping Angels in New York City. Anyway, the BBC has helpfully released this description of the image:

If you weren't already on the edge of your seat for the return of Doctor Who, then this…
Read more Read more

The image shows Amy Pond being carried by an injured, grim-faced Doctor. They're both surrounded by Daleks that have been encountered during different eras of the Time Lord's travels. A Dalek on the right of the picture does not have any of the vertical grille-like slats that have become a familiar feature, indicating it's a version the Doctor faced when he first met his oldest enemies on Skaro. And on the left there's a Special Weapons Dalek, last seen in the 1988 story, Remembrance of the Daleks.

Fringe

Showrunner Josh Wyman reveals some of the questions the fifth and final season will seek to answer:

"This season is designed to be a love letter for the fans. So, there are some questions out there that haven't been answered that we'll be answering - things you've probably forgotten about. A lot of those things will be examined and within the structure of those things, you never know who's going to show up... Anything more than speculation, I'm just afraid it will diminish the experience. I don't want to give away who's coming back and who's not because you're going to get some good surprises. Some of the things that I would be interested in if I was you guys asking is, ‘What happened in the time between 2015 when they were ambered and how did they get ambered and how did they end up here and what happened?' Those things I'm really interested in answering so you can get a hold of the entire new paradigm and go, ‘This is so cool. I get it now. She was here, they were here, this happened, they were in amber – oh, my God, their daughter grew up.' It's a really cool connect-the-dots that we're really thrilled about."

And star Joshua Jackson discusses in a general sense the likely endings to Peter, Walter, and Olivia's story:

"Olivia's ending is more private, it's more personal," Jackson said. "Peter will certainly be involved with the ending for her character, but if she was, at the beginning of our show, the innocent and there's even a speech in the pilot about Pandora's Box. I think that's the framing device for her entire character. You can't go back to childhood, even though many of us want to. For her, I think embracing the difficulties and the pain and sadness but also the happiness and joy and beauty of life - that's Olivia's journey. She's assembled and fumbled through this. Emotionally she's been very disconnected and for her to find some kind of basic happiness would make her a whole woman. I think Peter is deeply involved in her finding that happiness, but I'm not sure that Peter is so intimately involved. That's her finish. For Peter, I don't think his finish is actually about himself. The finish of his journey is for Walter to be absolved of the guilt he has of kidnapping Peter as a child. I think the thing that Peter wants more than anything else is for his father to be whole. If Walter gets there, that's the end of Peter's journey."

American Horror Story: Asylum

FX and series creator Ryan Murphy have revealed the show's second season, which is set in a mental institution in 1964, will be subtitled American Horror Story: Asylum so as to differentiate it from the first season and presumably any subsequent ones. Here's Murphy's stated rationale for the subtitle, in which he also strongly hints that this season will leave behind the paranormal. Yeah... somehow I don't believe that for a second:

When we launched the show last year, we kept quiet about the closed-ended nature of the show because we didn't want to tip off the audience that the characters were not going to survive... Now that it has been established that each year is a closed-ended story, the time seemed right to reveal what we're calling the new installment.

We picked 'Asylum' because it not only describes the setting - an insane asylum run by Jessica Lange's character which was formerly a tuberculosis ward - but also signifies a place of haven for the unloved and the unwanted. This year's theme is about sanity and tackling real life horrors.